


In Time

by illwick



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Bucky Barnes Feels, Dark(ish?) Steve Rogers, Fix-It, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Steve Rogers Feels, Stucky - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-02-25 22:27:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18710926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illwick/pseuds/illwick
Summary: Steve returned to his past to make things right.  But it isn't always what it seems.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first foray into this fandom, but writing canon-complaint fix-its for formerly-sunk 'ships is basically my favorite thing, and I love Steve/Bucky too much not to give them the send-off they deserve.
> 
> Suggested Chapter 1 soundtrack: "I'll be Seeing You," Billie Holiday

_September, 1946_

He picks the date all but by chance.

It’s true, he’d done a bit of research before he’d left, siphoning what tidbits he could from what remained of the SHIELD data dump left on Friday’s mainframe, but it hadn’t amounted to much. What he had found was a paystub with an address and a date. It would have to do.

As it turns out, September 22nd, 1946 is a brilliant, sunny day in Bridgeton, New Jersey. As he makes his way down the quaint suburban street, he feels the distant pang of _want_ to which he’d become so accustomed over his years. _This_ was supposed to be his future, _here,_ amidst these white picket fences and shiny new automobiles, set to the tune of big band music wafting out of rickety phonographs. This was all supposed to be _his._

But here in this moment, he feels as out of place and out of time as he ever has before. It strikes him suddenly that _this_ is his fate: he will never truly belong. He will never truly be _here_ or _there._ He’ll be forever drifting somewhere in the vague abyss of time. He’ll never be _home_ again.

He sternly reminds himself that this is the fate of a soldier. Any soldier, really. _Home_ dies on the battlefield.

And afterwards, there is _this._

If you were lucky.

And he _is_ lucky. He’s had more second chances than any one man could ever deserve. And today, miracle of miracles, he’s been given one more.

The tiny yellow house catches him off-guard. It’s somehow so laughably _ordinary,_ and the knowledge that it contains one of the most extraordinary figures in modern history is beautifully ironic. But of course, that’s Peggy. Classy and subtle and fearless and fierce all at once.

His heart skips a beat at the thought.

_Peggy._

There’s a moment - one brief, infinitesimal moment - where he hesitates, his fist poised inches from the door, his breath ragged and uneven in his chest, as the magnitude of what he is about to do eclipses him entirely, and a million new uncertainties about what this could all _mean_ claw their way to the forefront of his consciousness, and he questions _everything, everything,_ but no, _no,_ this _has to be, he needs this, he has to--_

He knocks.

To her credit, Peggy Carter does not faint, swoon, scream, or engage in any other type of reaction characteristic of her sex. Instead, she simply tips her head, crosses her arms, purses her cherry-red lips and asks, “Am I dreaming?”

Steve swallows the lump in his throat and blinks away away the tears in his eyes. _God, she’s as beautiful as he remembered._ He finally forms three simple words: “I can’t stay.”

Peggy contemplates this for a moment, then seems to decide it’s as good as an answer. She opens the screen door and waves him inside.

He makes his way to the living room, feeling distinctly awkward. He can’t remember where to put his hands (his pockets? His hips?), his mouth feels unnaturally dry, and his brain is whirring a mile a minute, cataloguing the domestic tableau in front of him, piecing together what became of Peggy’s life in the year since he went into the ice.

She’s still standing by the front door, eyeing him suspiciously.

It’s not exactly the welcome he’d hoped for. He’d had visions, _grand_ visions of their reunion, he’d imagined it so many times that he’d almost believed it was real, but none of the scenarios his fevered brain had conjured included Peggy hovering as close as possible to the nearest exit, regarding him with stern skepticism, almost… almost as if he were a threat.

And then he’s laughing, the reason for her wariness suddenly so glaringly obvious he can’t believe it hadn’t occurred to him before. _Of course_ she wouldn’t believe it was him. _Of course_ she’d regard him as a potential threat. For all she knew, he was a Hydra operative disguised to look like her long-lost love, here to infiltrate her home and take her down.

She quirks an eyebrow at him. “Care to tell me what you’re doing here?”

He pretends not to notice as she subtly pulls open a drawer in the console positioned inconspicuously by the door, undoubtedly reaching for her firearm.

He just gives her his most disarming shrug and a casual smile.

“Just came to get that dance with my best girl.”

For a moment, she freezes. Then her eyes fly open wide, and the next thing Steve knows, he’s holding her close, breathing her in. _God,_ she still smells the same, like hope and heart and _home,_ and he’s afraid that this time he won’t be able to stop the tears from coming, but it doesn’t matter because she’s crying too, and all that matters in the world is _this._

It’s an eternity and a split second all at once before she pulls away, wiping away her own tears before reaching up to wipe away his. She shakes her head, her voice thick with emotion. “It’s impossible. It’s not possible. How? _How?”_

There’s so much he wants to tell her. So much he wants to say. 

But he can’t.

So instead he says, “How about that dance?”

She eyes him quizzically, but she disentagles herself from his arms and turns to put a record on. By the time he takes her hand and pulls her close again, her eyes have gone soft and hazy. She doesn’t ask any more questions.

They sway.

And for one moment - one beautiful, blissful moment - this is all he is. His past, his present, his future, they all twist and tangle and bring him _here,_ to hold her, to comfort her, and to finally, simply _exist._

Their lips meet.

For one moment, he is at peace.

But then the song ends. And the needle hiccups incessantly on the tail end of the track. And the daylight outside is dying and the rich smell of summer is fading into fall as a crisp breeze blows through the gauzy sheers, and Steve’s heart clenches and he closes his eyes and slowly, gently pulls away.

“I have to go now.”

She smiles up at him. “Alright.”

He gives her a lopsided smile. “Not gonna ask me to stay?”

She shrugs. “As dreams go, this was a good one.”

He can’t resist the urge to lean forward to press one last kiss to her forehead. Then he turns and makes his way to the front door.

“Will I see you again?”

He freezes, his hand on the handle, heart in his throat. He throws one final glance over his shoulder. She looks strangely small, arms wrapped around herself, eyes still wide and inquisitive.

He takes a deep breath. “Not for a long, long time. Take care of yourself, Peg.”

She smiles, her face warm but resigned. “Goodbye, Steve.”

He pushes the door open, and disappears into the night.

He barely makes it down the block before he’s doubled over, sobs wracking his body, the tears coming in hot, urgent waves. He lowers himself onto the curb and buries his face in his hands, drowning in the enormity of it all.

He hasn’t cried this hard in a long, long time. It wasn’t that he didn’t cry, before. But usually it was soft and silent, the emotions finally pressing resolutely to the surface as he buried his face in his pillow and dutifully willed them back down.

But this was something hard and jagged, cutting him deeply in places he hadn’t dared touch in years.

The last time he cried this hard was eight weeks after the helicarriers went down in D.C. He and Sam had been following a lead on the whereabouts of the Soldier and they were in some godforsaken town in the middle of Iowa, holed up in a motel and awaiting updated intel from Nat.

The night had started out innocently enough. He’d done a bit of research on potential Hydra hideouts, still sifting through the enormous cache of data that was now available to the public following Nat’s release of SHIELD’s files. But after a while he’d grown distracted, his brain intent on focusing on the most important, riveting new truth in his life at the time: _Bucky is alive. Bucky is alive. Bucky. Bucky. Bucky._

He didn’t mean for what happened next to happen. He’d just decided it couldn’t hurt to do a bit of research about… well, about how things _were_ in modern times, when it came to… well, when it came to two men being the way that he and Bucky… he and Bucky had been. He knew that it wasn’t the life-shattering death sentence that it had been in their youth in Brooklyn, but he also knew that it was still a sensitive topic, and he figured spending a few minutes perusing the internet for some details _just in case_ probably wouldn’t go amiss.

What he didn’t expect was to find himself hours later, buried deep in an online forum, sobbing into his clenched fist as he read story after story about men who attempted to do what… well, what he had Bucky _would_ have done, had they both survived the war.

Because there’d always been an unspoken agreement between them that someday, they would _stop_. Someday they’d meet two sweet dames, and they’d get married to them, and start families. And sure, they’d still be best friends; maybe move to the suburbs, somewhere quiet and clean, live on the same block, have supper together on Sundays after church. Their wives would be friendly and their kids would be thick as thieves, and they’d have everything that the two of them had ever hoped for.

But most importantly, they would STOP.

Because as it turned out, stopping hadn’t been as easy as Steve had thought it would be when they’d first taken up with each other, back when they were barely more than kids. He’d thought for a while that once Bucky got himself a steady girl they’d call it quits, but that theory went out the window the night Buck came home from Margaret’s so hot and bothered he’d kept Steve up for hours and nearly made them both sleep through their alarm the next morning. Then he thought perhaps once he got HIMSELF a girl they’d put an end to it, but every double date they went on ended up with the two of them between the sheets with no one but each other, and Steve no closer to finding his future wife. Then surely once they both enlisted, _surely_ that would put a stop to things, but it was only four days’ march outside of the Hydra base before they were huddled in the same bed roll, biting back gasps and moans as they both adjusted to their new bodies. But they knew damn well that once they got home, found wives, became respectable _men, of course_ they’d stop, _of course they would._

But there in that gritty motel room two hours outside of Des Moines seven decades later, Steve Rogers finally realized that chances were, they would _never_ have stopped. He read testimony after testimony on the forum about men (some his age, some younger) who’d done the decent, respectable thing, who’d married women and started families and despite loving them more than anything in the world, they still couldn’t make themselves _stop._ Because whatever it was inside of them that made them queer, love and loyalty and family couldn’t just _make it go away._

And Steve was suddenly forced to confront a grotesque version of his imagined future, in which he married Peggy but still found himself wrapped up in Bucky’s arms, sneaking around for clandestine trysts in the garage or at the office or in some grotty motel room when they claimed they were just out for a drink, and _God,_ he could see it all so clearly it made him _sick_ to think about it.

Because he knew deep down, he couldn’t have stopped.

Because he knew deep down, he didn’t _want_ to.

And there. That was the gory heart of it all: That at the end of the day, it had always been Bucky Barnes. There was nothing more for Steve, and there could be nothing less. Bucky Barnes was his beginning, and Bucky Barnes would be his end.

Steve could have built a beautiful life with Peggy.

But it would have been a beautiful life built on an ugly lie.

And now here he sits, on the block where she lives, sobbing at everything that should have been but never could be.

For a moment, he imagines going back. He imagines going back to her right now, asking for her hand, and starting all over again, a _different_ future, a different future for them all.

He loses himself briefly, then throws his head back laughs bitterly up at the sky.

Because that could _never_ be. He could never sit silently by Peggy’s side, knowing Hydra was secretly infiltrating the very organization she was devoting her life to building. He could never focus on their family knowing that everything they had was built on SHIELD’s unsteady foundation.

And he could never rest knowing that Bucky Barnes was out there. Captured. Tortured. Trapped in endless suffering.

Steve Rogers had learned enough in all his strange years that he had the strength to walk away from war. But he could never walk away from Bucky Barnes. Bucky was the beginning and the end of it. The end of his line.

He stands up and brushes the creases out of his slacks, hastily wipes his cheeks, then rolls up his shirt cuff to program a new date into his navigator.

Because today, his new mission truly begins.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested Chapter 2 soundtrack: "Hell or High Water," The Rafters

_February, 1949_

The first time Steve finds Bucky, it’s on a dreary Wednesday morning in February of 1949, in a bunker located 100 yards due north of Alexanderplatz in East Berlin. The whole setup is almost laughably stereotypical: A bank vault doubling as an underground Hydra safehouse, teeming with low-level operatives and the inevitable oblivious civilians. The take-down is bloodier than Steve usually liked, but it had been a good eight months since his last real fight and he finds the mission a welcome respite from the relentless tedium of covert intelligence work. It’s a chance to flex his muscles, work his brawn instead of his brain. And maybe, just maybe (if he’s being entirely honest), enact a little vengeance.

It’s not until he’s standing face to face with Bucky’s unconscious form, frozen in inanimate suspension in the cryo chamber tucked into the darkest recess of the vault, that he realises he may be in over his head. He recalls what he read in the Winter Soldier’s files about the protocols for the Thaw process: A gradual warming with the subject in restraints, followed by a full Wipe, concluding with Activation via preset standards (which, Steve had been able to deduce, consisted of the series of trigger words embedded in the Soldier’s brain). So long as protocol was followed, there was no danger in the Thaw.

But Steve has no intention of following protocol. He’s not going to tie Bucky up and fry his brain and then turn him into a twisted puppet, compelled to do his bidding.

He’s going to take him away from here.

Somewhere safe.

So help him, God.

So he breaks open the cryo chamber and takes Bucky’s limp form into his arms, and he runs.

He’d stashed the stolen getaway car just around the corner, and by some miracle, he’s able to reach it unchallenged. Bucky is _heavy--_ by the time Steve’s hauling him unceremoniously down the street, he’s already noticed that Bucky’s arm isn’t the arm he remembers. It’s heavier, the design primitive and inelegant, and it’s dragging his shoulder down at an angle incongruent with proper attachment to his shoulderblade and spine. Steve cringes in sympathetic agony and does his best to support the arm until he’s able to get Bucky settled in the back seat, his head lolling and limbs akimbo. Then Steve gets behind the wheel, and drives.

None of what’s happening feels real. After all the planning, the scheming, the searching, the fact that he has Bucky Barnes in the _back seat of his damn car_ is sending surges of adrenaline through his already-electrified nerves, and it’s not until they’re well past Potsdam that Steve’s heart rate returns to normal.

They arrive at the safehouse before Bucky even begins to stir. The house is a tiny miracle within itself: An isolated SHIELD stronghold deep in enemy territory, all but forgotten in the churning tides of the Cold War. Steve had found the coordinates in some scanned microfiche files buried deep in the SHIELD data dump before he left; he considers it nothing short of a miracle that the intel checked out.

But sure enough, the house is there, just as promised.

And it is safe.

The supplies are dust-coated and archaic but at least they’re _there,_ squirreled away in the dilapidated cupboards of the drafty clapboard house. To Steve’s relief, the water still works, and while the gas lines seem non-existent, there’s a functional fireplace in the living room and a wood-burning stove in the kitchen, and that’s already more than he’d dared hope for. He feels a dull tug deep in his chest as he abandons Bucky’s motionless body on the rickety loveseat and leaves in search of firewood, but Bucky’s skin is still icy cold to the touch; he won’t awaken anytime soon.

He stocks as much firewood as he can in the waning hours of light, stacking it beneath the overhang of the sagging back porch to protect it from inclement weather. The air itself feels wet and it smells of snow; Steve doesn’t imagine they’ll make it to dawn before the first flakes begin to fall.

By the time he enters the house again, the rooms are cast in a pale blue twilight, and he shudders at the sight of Bucky, looking more corpse than corporeal where Steve had left him propped on the dingy loveseat. Steve checks his pulse; it’s faint but present, and Steve’s all but certain his skin feels ever so slightly warmer than it had when they’d first arrived.

Despite that fact, there’s a deep seed of doubt sprouting roots in the pit of his stomach. He’s forced to admit that he still hasn’t the faintest clue how to bring someone out of a cryogenic freeze; the details in the Hydra files were murky at best, emphasising the safety of the technicians more than the subject. 

He sighs and runs his thumbs lightly over the deep blue veins pulsing beneath the tissue-paper thin skin of Bucky’s shuttered eyelids.

He’ll have to wing it.

Like always.

He stacks the fireplace full of fresh wood and starts a fire. He’s reminded of nights like this in Europe, huddled in abandoned houses in bombed-out villages somewhere in France. But then there had been card games and cigarettes and whiskey and laughter, not just stony silence and the howl of the wind.

He drags the mattress out from the bedroom and positions it as close to the fire as he dares before settling Bucky’s limp form onto it. He throws every blanket he can find on top of him, frantically burrowing through cedar chests and mildewy closets until he’s certain he’s found everything the house has to offer. And only then does he lie down and pull Bucky close, _willing_ the heat of his own body to finally be enough to bring him back.

He remembers so many nights in Brooklyn like this one. Only back then, he was the cold one, with Bucky playing the part of his own personal furnace. He remembers how Bucky smelled back then, like pomade and lava soap and saltwater from his time working at the docks. He breathes in Bucky now, but all he smells is sweat and gunmetal and blood.

He holds him close, and waits for morning.

**************

Day 2 brings no change.

On Day 3, Bucky’s skin is tinged with pink.

On Day 4, Bucky rolls onto his side and curls towards the fire, moaning slightly as his metal arm shifts beneath him.

On Day 7, he opens his eyes.

To his profound regret, Steve isn’t even in the room at the time. He’d gone out to collect more firewood, a process complicated considerably by the fact that it had snowed again the night before, and he needed to be careful not to leave any decipherable tracks. He’d had to skirt around the peripheries of the treeline where the thick bed of pine needles beneath his feet was left unimpacted by the snow, sheltered by the generous evergreen boughs above. He’d returned to the house after an hour with his arms barely half-full, fretting about how much longer their supplies would last if the snow didn’t relent soon.

He’d put the kettle on in the kitchen and made himself a cup of coffee from the gritty stock in the cupboard. He’s ashamed to admit that he’d missed instant coffee-- the familiar brown sludge is somehow infinitely more comforting than whatever elaborate conconton was expelled from Tony’s Keurig machine back at headquarters all those million lifetimes ago, for reasons he’s not entirely prepared to dissect. He doesn’t miss the modern world as much as the thought he would. Though he does occasionally miss his smartphone.

He’d meandered into the living room, intending to do another standard check on Bucky’s vitals before maybe putting on some soup, only to stop dead in his tracks. Because blinking up at him from the mattress in front of the fire were the familiar blue-green eyes that he’d know anywhere.

“...Buck?” In an instant, every sense is on high alert. He realizes he has _no fucking clue_ how much Bucky does or doesn’t remember at this point; had Steve already been wiped irretrievably from his memory? Would Bucky be afraid? Would he need comfort? Or was he programmed to _attack?_ Steve issues a quick glance around the threadbare room in search of a makeshift weapon, just in case.

“Stevie?” Bucky’s voice is low and hoarse, but the word is unmistakable.

In an instant, Steve is by his side, crouched down by the mattress and pulling Buck’s remaining flesh hand into his own. “Yeah, Buck, it’s me. It’s alright. You’re safe now.”

Bucky swallows and stares up at him, his eyes wide and glazed. “Am I dreaming?”

“No, Buck. It’s okay. It’s just me. I came back for you, and you’re safe.”

“But… you died.”

Steve shakes his head vehemently. “That’s just a lie they told you. I wasn’t dead. I was just… lost for a while. But I came back, and then I found you. And now you’re here, and you’re safe. We’re safe.”

Bucky issues a watery grin up at him. Steve bends down and presses their foreheads together.

Bucky leans over the side of the mattress and throws up.

To his great shame, Steve’s forced to admit he’d had a rather romantic notion of what Bucky’s recovery would be like. He’d be weak and perhaps disoriented, but Steve would dote on him and feed him and comfort him as he regained his strength, and over time (three or four days, perhaps), Bucky would feel better - like recovering from the flu, his fever would break and he would return to his old self, and then it would be just the two of them, ready to face whatever the future held.

The reality is much darker.

As it turns out, coming out of cryo without a subsequent Wipe and Command seemed to share a lot of similarities with detoxing from chronic drug addition. Not that Steve had much experience with detoxing addicts - only what he knew from what nurses had told him the few times he’d made goodwill appearances at recovery facilities following the Battle of New York.

Because Bucky is Sick. Very, very sick. For days he throws up anything Steve feeds him, from the stalest bread to the blandest broth. He sweats uncontrollably, shedding all his clothes in a feverish frenzy before suddenly being overcome with chills, shivering so hard that all the blankets in the house can’t keep him warm. He grinds his teeth so incessantly Steve’s worried they’ll be reduced to powder, and his eyes are wild, blank and unseeing. He hallucinates. He has night terrors, screams echoing off the walls of the barren living room as Steve rocks him frantically, begging him to be quiet lest they be discovered.

But there are moments of respite in the chaos. Moments when Bucky will lie still and gaze into the flames of the fireplace while Steve strokes his hair and reads him passages of Field Dressing Manual he found in the First Aid kit in the kitchen (he takes a mental note to bring a book next time. Then he shudders at the thought of _next time,_ and pushes the thought resolutely from his head). Moments when they’re drifting off to sleep and Bucky will burrow against his chest and sigh contentedly, as if nothing else in the world really matters. Moments when it feels like for a split second, they’re _them._

And it’s all worth it.

Because on Day 18, Bucky smiles.

On Day 21, he eats a crust of bread and a bowl of soup. 

On Day 22, he and Steve talk.

On Day 23, he and Steve laugh.

On Day 26, he and Steve kiss.

And on Day 39, they make love for the first time in years.

It’s so _different_ yet still so impossibly the _same,_ and Steve has to blink back tears as every sensation washes over him, familiar and new all at once. Afterwards, he holds Bucky’s slumbering form in his arms and whispers _Thank you_ to whatever deity will deign to hear him.

On Day 47, Hydra shows up and takes Bucky back.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested Chapter 3 soundtrack: "Unfinished Business," White Lies

_July, 1956_

Whoever claimed that there were no mosquitoes in France was a damned liar, and that is _not_ a phrase Steve Rogers takes lightly.

He doesn’t remember them from during the war, but here in the suffocating heat of Marseille in summer, his shabby flat is infested with them. Every night he’s forced to choose between leaving the shutters closed, trapping the swampy air inside the already-claustrophobic space (unacceptable), or flinging them open in the vain hope for a _hint_ of breeze coming in off the water, but inviting in nothing but an unwelcome swarm instead.

He misses window screens.

He hates himself for missing window screens.

Back in the Future (what an odd thought), he’d always imagined if he ever had a chance to return to his own time, he wouldn’t miss a thing. Maybe his friends, he supposed, but not _things,_ the gaudy, superfluous gadgets and gizmos deemed essential by those oblivious privileged folks with more money than sense that seemed to populate the entirety of the modern world. Steve Rogers would miss none of that.

And while it’s true that he doesn’t miss tablets and televisions and smartphones and the rest of the dazzling array of screens that modern people adored shoving in front of their faces, he _does_ miss a few simple things. Like air conditioning. And microwaves.

And window screens.

But no matter. Tomorrow night, Bucky would be here, extricated from Monaco following a hit on a member of the Venezuelan government and spirited away to the nearest Hydra stronghold in _Vallon des Auffes_ to be put back on ice. Steve knows the plan like the back of his hand, as he’s already formulated their subsequent escape.

Time was, he’d have tried to prevent the assassination altogether, but he’s learned a lot of valuable lessons in the past six years.

First: Rescuing Bucky when he was mid-mission was pointless. If he’d already been Wiped and issued a Command, he couldn’t break his programming. Steve had learned this the hard way when he’d incapacitated Bucky during a mission in Budapest and taken him to a nearby safehouse to recover: Upon regaining consciousness, Bucky had fought him tooth and nail, relentless and feral, to the point Steve became concerned he’d hurt himself and been forced to simply let him go. He’d showed no signs of recognition in the full 36 hours that Steve had held him.

Second: The natural Thaw process seemed essential to Bucky’s ability to recover his memories. Though he doesn’t have any data to back it up, Steve’s fairly certain that whatever off-brand serum Bucky had been administered back during the War gives his brain the unique capacity to regenerate neurological pathways (an ability which, according to all the literature Steve’s ever read on the matter, shouldn’t exist). If Bucky’s allowed to come out of the Thaw naturally (enduring the ravaging detox process that goes along with it) and isn’t Wiped in the chair instead, his memory is actually shockingly good. He remembers Steve. He remembers elements of their childhood. And (perhaps most surprisingly), he remembers the times Steve’s rescued him before. He’s come to expect it, greeting Steve with a watery smile and a “Hey, pal” and a squeeze of his hand before the inevitable nausea kicks in.

Third: Bruce and Tony had been right about their theory of quantum time travel: The past was, for all intents and purposes, unchangeable. Bucky’s fate was sealed in stone. As careful as Steve tried to be, as fast and far as he and Bucky ran, as valiantly as Steve fought Hydra every time they showed up to repossess their prized assassin, Steve was never able to keep Bucky away from them for long. The longest he’d succeeded up until this point was four months and six days _(four months and six blissful days)_ one time in Poland. Most times he’d get to keep him for a few weeks, at best. And sometimes they’d catch up to them before Bucky had even regained consciousness and snatch him back from Steve’s grasp. 

The worst was when Bucky _was_ conscious and they’d use his trigger words to activate the Soldier, turning him against Steve to orchestrate his own recapture. It was like a bullet to the heart, watching the man who just hours before had made love to him in their bed like he was the most precious thing on earth suddenly go cold and unseeing, reduced to a violent machine. Steve wishes he could figure out how to break Bucky’s response to the triggers, but he hasn’t the slightest clue where to start, and he no longer has access to the data in the Soldier’s files that he’d left behind in the Future. As far as he knows, only Wakandan medicine had succeeded in ridding Bucky of his programming completely, and he’s fairly certain that showing up at the Wakandan border in 1956 would not be a welcome intrusion.

So he takes what he can get. Stolen chunks of time filling in the blank spaces in the Soldier’s files, time when (back in the Future) they’d all assumed the Soldier was stored in cryo, awaiting activation. Each day he gets with Bucky is small miracle.

And it’s worth it.

_God,_ it is worth it.

Because after the agony of the detox, the moments he and Bucky spend together are worth every bit of suffering they’ve both had to endure to arrive there.

The first few days after Bucky comes back to himself, they’re like horny teenagers all over again, rarely leaving the bed, re-learning every inch of each other’s bodies until they’re sweaty and spent and sated and too exhausted to carry on.

And if they’re lucky enough to have more days after that, those days are spent in domestic bliss. They talk and read and cook and laugh. Sometimes Steve draws. Sometimes they dance. Sometimes they run.

It’s not perfect. Not by a long shot. Because sometimes Bucky goes quiet and still, his eyes glazing over and his expression turning sad. Steve will ask him what he’s thinking about, and Bucky will tell him in short, staccato sentences about his last mission. The things he’d done. The things he wishes he could truly forget. And Steve will wrap his arms around him and hold him and tell him how sorry he is that he can’t protect him forever. And sometimes Bucky cries, but other times he’ll just sigh and close his eyes and lean against Steve’s chest, and let it be.

But it always ends.

Not always the same way. Sometimes it’s by brute force, an attack on their safehouse, the two of them outnumbered twenty times over. Sometimes it’s by cunning, a single Hydra operative activating the Soldier, using his triggers to initiate his own extraction. Other times it’s by stealth, and Steve will leave to collect firewood or fetch water or pick up supplies and he’ll return to find the house empty and cold, a Bucky-shaped hole in the universe.

It never gets easier.

Even though he knows it’s coming every time. Though he doesn’t have access to the Soldier’s files anymore, he did jot down a rough outline of the Soldier’s confirmed missions before he left, so he knows approximately when he’ll lose Bucky again. It doesn’t make the heartbreak any easier to endure.

The one blessing, for whatever it’s worth, is that Hydra seemed to have abandoned the prospect of capturing Steve as well relatively early on, after only three failed attempts. He suspects it’s to do with the fact that he’d proven resistant to their conditioning (he assumes the serum helped exponentially on that front), and the massive body count he racked up during his subsequent escapes. So though Bucky’s freedom was never assured, Steve was at least always free to pursue him. Every time.

And tomorrow will be no different.

Steve lays out his tac gear and makes sure his weapons are cleaned and loaded. He smiles wryly, remembering all the times he’d turned up his nose at firearms and blades, insisting the blunt force of his shield was so _much more humane._

_Humane_ is a distant memory now. All that matters is Bucky. And Steve will pay any price for him: In gore and gristle and bone and flesh. His hands are filthy now, filthier than Bucky’s, and the fact that they’re covered in the _right_ kind of blood is cold comfort, indeed.

He can’t bring himself to care. 

He swats a mosquito buzzing in his ear, its elusive size no match for his super-soldier reflexes. He looks down at the mangled carcass smashed into his palm, and is startled to see a tiny pool of blood oozing from its abdomen.

He smears it on the bedspread, and settles in to wait.

Tomorrow can’t come soon enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Upped the chapter count, so here's an extra mid-week post!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested Chapter 4 Soundtrack: "I'll be Good," James Young

_November, 1969_

“Nice weather we’re havin’?” Bucky fights to keep the edges of his lips from turning up in amusement as Steve blunders through the doorway of the bunker looking for all the world like a drowned cat. His hair and beard are both dripping rivulets of water onto the concrete floor, and the canvas sack slung over his shoulder is so waterlogged, Bucky shudders to think of the state of the groceries. Bucky himself is curled up safe and dry by the space heater in his favorite shabby chair, feeling more than a bit smug that Steve had insisted on leaving him behind yet again and had come out considerably worse for the wear.

Steve mutters something unintelligible as he toes off his boots, glowering in Bucky’s general direction.

“What was that, sweetheart? Couldn’t hear you over that frown of yours.”

Steve rolls his eyes and casually drops the bag of supplies onto the floor, then rounds on Bucky and strides across the small room, his face etched with grim determination. “How ‘bout you quit wastin’ your lips on sweet talkin’ me and use ‘em to warm me up instead?”

Before Bucky can get a word in edgewise, Steve is straddling him and lowering himself onto his lap, cupping his face in his hands and planting a frigid wet kiss on his lips.

“Augh, dammit, Rogers! You’re gettin’ me all wet!”

Steve grins mischievously and kisses him again before pulling back just enough to murmur against his lips, “You always know just what a fella wants to hear…” A slow grind of his pelvis shuts Bucky right up, and it’s a few more minutes before he can get his own head back on straight.

“Alright, alright, get offa me. You wanna make time, that’s all well and good, but we ain’t doin’ it in my favorite chair with your clothes in that state. Up!” He pushes against Steve’s sternum with his metal hand and uses his flesh one to still the seductive roll of Steve’s hips. Steve groans but reluctantly rights himself and stands, pulling Bucky to his feet after him.

Bucky starts to pull off his dampened shirt as he makes his way towards the dingy mattress tucked in the corner, but to his surprise, Steve does an about-face and picks up the soaked sack of supplies and plops it onto the makeshift plywood table (really, a couple of old boards stacked on top of a few spare cinder blocks), then begins to pull out the contents and inspect them.

“The hell, Rogers, you gonna get me worked up and then leave me high and dry over here?”

Steve raises an eyebrow and takes in the state of Bucky’s clothes, now dampened by Steve’s affections. “Think I left you anything but dry, Buck. Anyway, we should assess our stock to see if there’s anything that needs to go in the ice chest. Lawrence said all the meat is salted, but I don’t wanna risk it.”

With an exasperated groan, Bucky flops down onto the mattress and runs his fingers through his hair, careful not to catch any in the metal joints as he wills his erection to subside (at least for the time being).

“He got anything good for us this week?” They get all their supplies from a farmer in the next town over who sells ‘overstock’ goods out of the back of his barn for well below store prices. They’ve intentionally never asked where it all comes from, and he respects their privacy in turn. It’s always a crapshoot when it comes to his stock-- some weeks he’s got butter and meat and bread and apples, and others it’s just turnips and canned beans. It reminds Bucky of the grocery stock shortage back after the market crash in Brooklyn, and he finds it oddly comforting.

“A few rashers of bacon, actually. Beans, of course, but we’ve also got onions and a few potatoes, so that’ll be nice. Eggs. Butter. No yeast again this week, but we might be able to scrape together a decent enough soda bread.” Bucky smiles; Steve’s ma made the best soda bread in Brooklyn, and she seemed to have passed her talent on to her son. “No fruit, though. Not in season anymore, even the apples are done. Though I was thinkin’ of puttin’ in a special request to see if he could get us some oranges for Christmas.”

Bucky freezes in place for a split second, then pulls himself up to sit, feet resting on the frigid concrete floor. Something feels cold and heavy in his stomach. “Christmas?”

“Yeah, Buck, it’s November, remember? It’ll be here before we know it.”

Bucky shakes his head. “No, no, I know that, it’s just… we’re still gonna be here at Christmas?”

Steve shoots him a skeptical glance over his shoulder from where he’s busying himself tucking their rations away on the shelves. “Where else would we be?”

Bucky swallows hard, his head spinning. “I dunno, I just… is this… um, is this… the whole plan?”

Steve turns around to face him again, planting his hands resoundly on his hips. Bucky knows that stance; he’s angling for a fight. Sure enough, when he speaks his voice has taken on that _Captain_ tone that Bucky knows all too well. “You’re safe. We’re together. We haven’t detected so much as a whisper of Hydra activity for almost four months. _Yes,_ this is the whole plan. Because it’s a damn good one.”

Bucky licks his lips and stares down at his metal hand, which is picking absently at a pill on the wooly blanket they use as a bedspread. “I ain’t sayin’ it’s not a good plan, Steve. But I just… we go days without seein’ the sun. You won’t let me leave the property. We’re alive, but this ain’t much of a life we’re livin’, here.”

Bucky doesn’t expect Steve to recoil as though he’d just been slapped, but that’s exactly what he does. When he speaks again, his tone is sharp, accusatory. “You’re saying this ain’t enough? You and me together, that ain’t enough for you?”

Bucky’s on his feet and across the room in seconds, reaching towards Steve, _willing_ him to understand, but Steve just crosses his arms and steps back, his eyes dark and wounded. He won’t meet Bucky’s gaze.

Shit. Bucky’s suddenly reminded of that time back in 1938 when he and Steve got into a huge fight _(Christ, had it been over a dame? Stupid, so, so stupid…)_ on the same night a blizzard struck New York. They’d screamed themselves blue in the face then quit speaking altogether, but found themselves snowed into their tiny apartment for four days straight, the drifts outside as high as the sills of their second-story windows. He’s pretty sure they’d only made up because making time seemed to be the only way to distract themselves when they were trapped in a space that small for that long.

He changes tactics abruptly. “Stevie, sweetheart, you know that ain’t it. But we only got so much time. You said it yourself: they’re gonna find me. Somehow or other, they always do. Guess I’d just prefer that when it happens, I’m not holed up in the ground like a gunshy rabbit, smellin’ of mildew and sickled from scurvy.”

Steve’s still glaring at the floor and he hasn’t uncrossed his arms, but his shoulders slump a bit, and Bucky can feel some of the fight going out of him. “We ain’t gonna get scurvy, Buck. Don’t think we can, with the serum and all.”

“Alright, fair enough, but this bunker sure ain’t doin’ much for my complexion, and the damp makes my shoulder ache.” It’s a low blow-- Steve’s always _painfully_ concerned about Bucky’s arm, insisting on regular massages and hot water bottles for where his shoulder is twisted grotesquely by the weight of the monstrosity Hydra has affixed to him.

Steve looks pensive for a moment, then licks his lips. “So say we decide to leave. Where do you reckon we should go?” He finally meets Bucky’s eye.

Progress. Bucky gives him his most devilish grin. “I liked Paris an awful lot.” They’d spent two weeks together in Paris once, in 1961… or was it ‘62? The Soldier had completed a mission in Cuba and Steve had intercepted the transport of his cryo chamber from the bow of a freight tanker at the port in Saint-Melo and whisked Bucky away to Paris. Bucky’s sure he detoxed for a week or two (he always did, though he remembers little of it), but once he came back to himself, Steve took him to a real nice hotel and they lived like kings for fifteen days. They rarely left the bed, but the sheets were silk and the coffee was strong and they ate bread and cheese and drank real champagne. Bucky’s never been certain what prompted the extravagance, but he’s pretty sure it had something to do with the Timeline.

The damned _Timeline._

He doesn’t know a whole lot about Steve’s… situation. Not for lack of trying: He asks plenty of questions, but Steve remains staunchly vague and elusive, insisting it’s a matter of “maintaining the time-space continuum,” or going on about quantum physics in a way that makes Bucky doubt whether he REALLY needed tutoring back in Miss Percell’s math class when they were twelve years old, or if it was just an excuse to spend more time with Bucky.

What he _does_ know is that Steve was frozen in ice a few days after Bucky fell from the train. He knows that Steve woke up later - a LOT later (Steve won’t tell him specifics). So he knows Steve’s been to the Future. And he also knows Steve found a way to come back, and rescue him.

And for that, he is grateful. No matter what horrors Hydra puts him through each time they stake claim over his body, none of it matters when he blinks his eyes open to find Steve’s sweet baby blues staring back at him. In any time, in any place, _that_ would make it all worth it. Stevie would be his beginning and his end. ‘Till the end of the line.

But Steve also has a Timeline. He won’t let Bucky see it (and admittedly, Bucky’s snooped around looking for it, but to no avail). But Bucky knows what’s on it: The active mission dates for the Soldier. So while Steve never knows when he’ll find Bucky and their time together will start, he always knows approximately when it will end.

It must be a terrible burden. It’s one Bucky wishes he could share, but he knows deep down, it’s for the best.

_All for the best._

Across from him, Steve is shaking his head. “No. Paris was a mistake. They caught up to us so damn fast… Hydra’s grip is too strong there. We need somewhere different, new. We could… we could go back to America?”

Bucky quirks his eyebrow. “Why, all the other flags in the world clash with your outfit?”

“Shut up, ya jerk.” Steve pretends to be annoyed, but he’s smiling, so Bucky’s not fooled for a second.

“What about Brooklyn?” The words come out of Bucky’s mouth before he can second guess it, which is probably a good thing. Brooklyn might _sound_ perfect, but it might also be a _terrible_ idea, heavy with memories and sorrow that neither of them are ready to face. They rarely make it through a night without at least one nightmare between the two of them, and he’s pretty sure being back in their old neighborhood wouldn’t help with their shared sense of displacement.

Luckily, Steve’s on the same page, and he turns serious again immediately. “Too urban. We need to avoid the cities. The further out we are, the more time and manpower it will take for them to have operatives track us. We need somewhere inconspicuous.”

“Got it!” Bucky holds up one finger, then turns to grab one of the books on U.S. History that Steve had brought down here for them to read, and flips it open to a page containing a map of the country and holds it up in front of Steve. “Close your eyes.”

“You gotta be kiddin’ me.”

“I ain’t kiddin’, punk. We never got to play for real! Come on, close your eyes!”

Steve’s laughing for real now, the laugh that makes his eyes shine and crinkle at the edges and that makes Bucky feel like he’s choking on his own damn heart. He remembers he and Steve used to play this game when they were seven years old, huddled around Bucky’s pa’s dusty globe in the Barnes family’s tenement apartment. They weren’t supposed to touch his pa’s stuff, but he was never home, so it didn’t much matter. 

_“Let’s decide where we’re gonna live when we get rich, Stevie. Close your eyes.”_

And Steve would close his eyes and put his finger on the globe and Bucky would spin it and they’d end up in Abkhazia or Iceland or Ha’il or Liberia or (most of the time) the ocean, and they’d laugh and laugh and laugh, dreaming of what wonders they’d see.

So here in their bunker all these years and a hundred lifetimes later, Steve closes his eyes, reaches out, and points.

Bucky leans forward to peer at the page. “Dixon, Missouri.”

Steve squints at the tiny dot on the map. “You sure about this, Buck?”

Bucky furrows his brow. “Sure as I can be, I guess. It’s gotta be better than… where the fuck are we, even?” It dawns on him that he’s never actually even _asked_ where this damned bunker is.

“York.”

“Jesus. Well, it’s gotta be better than subterranean York.”

Steve gives a resigned sigh. “If… I guess, if you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.”

“Alright. We’d best start makin’ a plan.” Steve slaps the book shut and turns towards the shelves.

“Mmmm, not so fast there, Captain Rogers.” Bucky catches him in a tight hug from behind, his hands making their way to the buttons of Steve’s shirt. “I’m afraid first order of business is gettin’ you out of these wet clothes. You’ll be useless to me if you come down with a cough.”

Steve shoots him a sly side-eye over his shoulder. “That so, Sergeant Barnes?”

“Just so. Think I oughta perform a full physical, just in case. Make sure you’re ready for active duty.”

“Well, if you say so, Sarge…”

They’re both laughing now, but it quickly turns to sighs as their wet clothes fall to the floor and the world dissolves around them, leaving nothing but a bunker in a cold November rain.

**************

They don’t make it to Dixon before Christmas, much to Bucky’s chagrin. Deep down he knows Steve’s right: From a tactical standpoint, showing up in an agricultural town in the dead of winter wouldn’t provide them with much of an alibi for what they were doing there, why two able-bodied men would roll into such a town with nothing but the clothes on their backs and worn shoes on their feet. Much better to wait for planting season, when they could pose as sharecroppers (or even draft dodgers, they conclude ironically).

So it’s Christmas in the bunker for the two of them. They do their best to make the most of it; Lawrence gets them salted ham and rustles up two precious oranges, which he and Steve consume with the same hedonistic gusto that they did their Christmas oranges back in 1925. To add to the atmosphere, they power down the generator and light their backup candles, enveloping the stark room in a warm, cozy glow. As night falls, Steve takes the radio up to the top of the stairs (the thing can’t catch a signal when it’s below ground) and props open the door and finds a station playing Christmas tunes, and he and Bucky listen to _O Holy Night_ echoing through the tinny speakers as they move together under the blankets to keep out the cold, and Bucky’s pretty sure it’s not just the candlelight that’s shining in Steve’s eyes.

They leave the bunker in February and spend a few weeks engaged in elusive maneuvers, in case of the unlikely event anyone’s on their tail. They crisscross England a few times over before making their way to Ireland, finally purchasing cargo tickets on a freight ship back to the States. Bucky’s not too keen about being on a ship (no means of egress and mandatory medical screenings), but Steve reminds him that air travel’s not really an option for international fugitives, and he’s pretty certain that even with the serum, swimming’s not really on the table (Bucky rolls his eyes at Steve's sass). They reach port in Charleston without incident and make their way West.

They arrive in Dixon in early April, with the ground just beginning to thaw. As Steve had predicted, it’s good timing: Despite the lingering chill in the air, there are plenty of plyboard signs leaned up against mailboxes at the end of long country driveways, advertising _HELP WANTED._ They pick one based on location (two miles off the nearest interstate, the fields backed up against a dense woods perfect for disappearing into if the situation required it).

The main house is shabby and grey, long overdue for a new roof and a coat of paint, but the occupant is exactly what they’re looking for: An elderly widow named Isabelle in need of a few pairs of hands to help her manage her meagre acreage in exchange for food and boarding in the dilapidated shack at the property’s edge. She initially seems suspicious that she hasn’t seen Steve and Bucky ‘round these parts before, but then Bucky lets her catch a glimpse of his metal arm and Steve lets slip something about _“Back in the War,”_ and she doesn’t ask any more questions after that.

They’re brusque and stand-offish towards Isabelle, even though she’s nothing but civil to the two of them. Bucky can see it killing Steve to not be able to turn on his old-school charm and offer to help her carry her groceries, sweep her porch, or wipe the grit off her double-paned windows. But it’s for her own safety, they both agree: The less she knows about the two of them, the better. Not that if Hydra ever came looking, she’d even stand a chance. But still. They have to do what they can.

Despite all that, the life they’re able to build for themselves feels dangerously close to perfect. The shack cleans up nicely with a bit of spit and elbow grease, and they take it upon themselves to plant some of their own vegetables in the tiny plot out back facing the woods. They’re still city slickers to the bone, but they know enough to make sure that wood is chopped and stacked under the rickety overhang out back, and that when the tomatoes turn scarlet red it’s time to bring them in to be cleaned and canned, just like Steve’s ma used to do with the ones she grew in the window box out on the fire escape back in Brooklyn. Steve and Bucky work together to can them just like they used to, and it does Bucky’s heart some good to see their hands covered in something besides blood for a change.

It feels good to do honest _work._ As safe as the bunker was, Bucky knows deep down that they were a ticking time bomb down there. Out here in the open air, everything feels peaceful. Honest. Free.

In September the corn harvest starts, with the grain sorghum harvest hot on its heels a few short weeks later. They both work hard, and Isabelle seems pleased. She’s a stern taskmaster, but they’re secretly glad for it: Neither of them had ever worked close to a field for a single day of their lives, so her tendency to relentlessly micromanage them is in fact a welcome relief. At the end of each day they wash up at the pump outside the house, put on clean clothes, cook a decent meal, and collapse into bed for a night of well-earned rest. Bucky’s not quite sure how mere humans manage such a schedule without a bit of chemical enhancement at all.

Bucky’s not a particularly superstitious man, but he is admittedly a romantic. As October 23rd draws closer, he gets an excited, fluttery feeling in the pit of his stomach when he thinks about the prospect of the two of them spending that date together and _free_ for the first time in years.

Because October 23rd is their anniversary.

Well, they don’t have an _official_ anniversary, as there was never anything so formal as that between them, but Bucky Barnes will _never_ forget the first night he made time with Steve Rogers, because it was damn near the best night of his life.

It was 1933, and they were barely more than kids. When he looks back on it, he’s surprised at how fast it all happened, though at the time it had felt as natural as breathing. He and Steve were sitting shoulder to shoulder on Steve’s bed, paging through a comic that Bucky had swiped from the corner store (but swore to Steve he’d paid for with a little extra cash he had on hand, and Steve was playing along). Steve’s ma was working the night shift and it was way past their bedtime, but Bucky’s ma was drinking again and he wouldn’t be missed.

One minute their fingers were brushing as they both reached to turn the page at the same time, and the next their lips were colliding in an eager clash of tongues and teeth. And then all of a sudden their clothes were gone and they were under the covers and he was on top of Steve, _inside_ Steve, and they were both gasping and moaning as they moved together frantically in a flurry of sweat and heat and a sweet kind of pleasure that neither of them had ever known before.

Afterwards they kissed some more and fell asleep side by side, and Bucky was overcome with the sense that for the first time ever, something in his life felt _right._

They’d been fifteen years old. And they hadn’t stopped since.

Sometimes back in the day Steve would talk about stopping, but Bucky never paid him much mind. It had still hurt to hear him say it, but he knew deep down that Steve didn’t mean a thing: They were in this together, ‘till the end of the line.

So this year, Bucky wants to do something special for October 23rd. To show Stevie that he still remembers, and that he’s still crazy about him, even after all these years.

That morning he asks Steve to handle the field work on his own, tilling a portion of the acreage to make way for the cover crops. Steve gives him a funny look, but Bucky makes an excuse about Isabelle asking him to take her truck into town for the mechanic to have a look at an issue with it, and Steve seems to take that at face value.

So Bucky heads into town and gets down to business. First, he picks up the ingredients for a sweet potato pie at the market. The bakery sells pre-made ones, but they’re expensive, and he and Steve don’t have a lot of cash to throw around.

Next, he heads to the flower shop. He’s never been inside one before (at least, not that he remembers), and the heady fragrance is gloriously intoxicating. He decides on roses, because they’re classic and romantic and he’s a bit of a sap, and he remembers to smile at the bubbly sales clerk who helps him wrap them up (“Your wife will love them!”).

His last stop is at the shop on the very end of main street, a dim little place with a red and blue pole revolving cheerfully out front. He goes inside and sits down in the chair, and pulls out one of Steve’s sketches from his pocket to show the barber what he wants.

“That you, kid?”

He gives the barber a wane smile. “Yeah. Couple ‘a years ago.”

“Time ain’t been too kind, eh?” The man laughs, and Bucky laughs too, but he doesn’t really mean it. He doesn’t find it very funny.

The barber clips off his ponytail and drops it to the floor, and Bucky feels like more weight than just hair has fallen off his shoulders. He’d kept his hair long more out of apathy than anything else. It earned him a lot of sideways glances in a town like this, but Steve was too chicken to try and cut it into anything resembling an acceptable shape, and Bucky had always been too nervous to go to a barber before. But today was special. It had to be done.

He smiles a little at his own reflection as the image of one Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes slowly takes shape in the mirror. He looks older, for sure - there are lines on his face and a dullness in his eyes that hadn’t been there before it all, but hell, for his age? He’d take what he could get.

The barber sweeps the clippings off the back of his neck and claps his hands on is shoulders. “Well, son? What do you think?”

“It’s perfect.”

The old man leans down and whispers in Bucky’s ear.

“Longing.”

Bucky cocks his head. “Pardon?”

“Rusted. Furnace. Daybreak.”

_No. No, no, no, this couldn’t be happening, not here, not now, they couldn’t find him, not now, please, no, not now, no, not yet, not yet, no, no, no…_

“Seventeen. Benign. Nine.”

_Nonononononono, Stevie, no, don’t let them take me, Stevie, Stevie, Stevie..._

“Homecoming… One…”

The world goes dark.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested Chapter 5 Soundtrack: "Across the Universe," The Beatles

_July, 1986_

Steve runs his fingertips gently up and down the divot of Bucky’s spine. Bucky sighs and shivers in his sleep despite the oppressive heat in their hotel room-- Morocco in July was sweltering, and Steve can’t remember the last time he didn’t feel like he was covered in a permanent salty sheen of sweat. By the time he stepped out of the shower each morning (which he took with the water set to the coldest setting, though it came out tepid at best), he already felt damp with perspiration, and by the time he turned in for bed each night, he felt downright foul (though to his credit, Bucky never seemed to mind).

Oh, well. It’s better than being cold, he supposes. He and Buck both hate the cold.

His fingertips catch on a patch of uneven skin, and he lifts his head for a closer look, peering intently at the ghostly-white flesh of Bucky’s back in the moonlight.

Damn. Another scar. Knife wound this time (thankfully not _another_ bullet), but it was _so damn close to the spine,_ and the edges are puckered and uneven, indicating an ensuing infection. Steve’s heart clenches at the thought.

Despite his best efforts to ignore it, Bucky’s welfare during his time as the Soldier was quickly devolving from bad to worse. Every time Steve rescued him he had more scars, more aches, more pains, and his detox symptoms were growing more severe each time he came out of the freeze.

Steve remembers enough about the materials he’d read on the eventual collapse of the USSR to know that by now, things must not be going well for Bucky’s handlers. They were growing reckless, sloppy and desperate, unleashing him on mission after mission with ever-diminishing returns. But of course Bucky was the one paying the price.

And from what Bucky remembers of his time with his handlers, the intel he reports to Steve does little to reassure him.

They have Bucky working in the Red Room now. Bucky recalls girls-- _little_ girls-- being brainwashed and trained to do the handlers’ bidding. Steve remembers Natasha’s vague references to her upbringing, and shudders to realize that soon, she’ll be there, too.

Steve tries his best to piece together the information Bucky can give him about the whereabouts of the facility, but it’s not much use. He’s never been able to successfully rescue Bucky from within a Soviet stronghold with the exception of that first time in East Berlin; Since then, all of his successful missions have been when Bucky was out of hand on an assignment.

For a while he hopes that perhaps Bucky was being held at the bunker in Siberia (at least Steve knows approximately where that is), but the schematics don’t line up and Steve’s forced to conclude that he has no clue where in the abyss of the red Soviet swath on the map they’re keeping Bucky when he’s not being deployed.

So moments like this are precious. He presses a kiss to Bucky’s flesh shoulder, and beside him, Bucky hums contentedly.

They’ve been in Casablanca for a month and a half now, after Steve broke Bucky out of a Hydra holding cell in Tunisia. He’d wanted to get further away than Morocco, but Bucky was too sick and weak to run very far or fast. So they’d settled here, in a cozy _riad_ ten minutes from the souk that they pay for in cash in exchange for relative peace and blissful anonymity.

To Steve’s relief, Bucky’s doing better now. He’d gained some weight back and lost the gaunt, hollow look in his eyes. Daily Argan oil massages for his shoulder have eased some of the agony caused by his arm which, to Steve’s horror, had been recently replaced by the one Steve vividly remembers from his time together with Bucky in the Future. Though the design was more streamlined and lighter than the old version, they’d somehow wired it directly into Bucky’s nervous system, which caused him near-constant discomfort. Steve has no idea how to make it stop.

Bucky looks so much older now.

He smiles wryly as soon as the thought crosses his mind. Sure, Bucky looks older, but it’s nothing compared to Steve.

He confesses he hadn’t really noticed their age difference manifesting itself until one morning four years ago. They were brushing their teeth side-by-side in the motel mirror of whatever rural town they were camped out in, and Steve had suddenly realized how much _older_ he looked than Bucky.

He supposes he shouldn’t have been surprised; though the serum seemed to delay the aging process considerably, it was no match for the cryo freeze that preserved Bucky (and once upon a time, he himself) in suspended animation. So while Bucky would age during the times he was free with Steve, the moment he went back into cryo, time for him would stop.

But for Steve, it just kept going. Bucky now looks to be, by Steve’s best approximation, in his early thirties, while Steve doesn’t look a day younger than fifty. Though he supposes he shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth (he was now about eighty by his own approximation, factoring in the time he’d lived in the Future), it was startling in a way he hadn’t come to expect. It made him sad to realize that as the years went on, the difference would only grow.

Lucky for him, Buck just made a few ‘silver fox’ jokes here and there, and for the most part, let it go.

“Shaddap, Stevie, you’re thinkin’ too loud over there.” Bucky’s voice is low and sleep-drunk as he rolls over to face Steve, his eyes blinking open to meet Steve’s gaze in the pale moonlight shining in through the sheer curtains.

“Hey, Buck, ain’t my fault you need more beauty sleep than a princess.”

Bucky rubs his eyes, but still manages a muttered, “Punk.”

“Jerk.”

Bucky takes a deep breath and nestles against his pillow, his expression turning suddenly serious, and he reaches forward to cup Steve’s jaw lightly in his hand. “You wanna talk about it?”

Steve purses his lips. “Not really.” He tucks an errant strand of hair behind Bucky’s ear. Christ, he’s _so beautiful_ when they’re like this.

“C’mere.” Bucky rolls onto his back and pulls Steve into his arms, and Steve melts effortlessly into the embrace, resting his cheek against the warm flesh of Bucky’s pec, letting his eyelids flutter shut as he holds Bucky close. He can feel Bucky press a kiss to the top of his head, and he concentrates on the rhythm of Bucky’s slow, steady breathing. In and out. In and out. Each breath a miracle, each heartbeat a blessing.

He can’t worry about the Future, or it will ruin their here and now.

And they only have so much here and now left.

He holds Bucky close, and breathes.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested Chapter 6 soundtrack: "Stay Alive," Jose Gonzalez

_September, 1989_

Bucky doesn’t always remember every place he’s been particularly clearly, but he can say with near-certainty that Homer, Alaska is the most beautiful one he’s ever seen.

He and Steve arrived there a year and a half ago, after Steve busted him out of a cryo chamber in Lavrentia and skipped town on an oil tanker headed across the straight. They’d gone south on instinct after landing back on friendly soil, but run out of steam when they’d stumbled upon this sliver of paradise, complete with a _HELP WANTED_ sign propped up outside the marine grid office in the center of town.

They took up jobs at the grid doing above-water work on the tankers that docked there, and it paid them more than enough for rental on a clapboard cottage at the edge of town overlooking the harbor and the mountains. Enough men in town had worked on oil rigs and tankers that Bucky’s missing limb drew nary a second glance, and folks kept to themselves enough that if they thought it was odd two men their age were living together in quiet domesticity, they didn’t bring it up to their faces.

It was six months into their stay there when Bucky surprised Steve with a motorcycle.

Steve was incensed by the extravagance. “Hell, Buck, what am I supposed to do with this thing?”

“Figured you oughta ride it through some of this gorgeous scenery we spend all our time lookin’ at. We got weekends off now, after all.”

“And what about you?”

“Figured I’d ride along, too.”

“I only see one bike here.”

“Maybe I fancy ridin’ behind ya.”

“If I had a dime for every time I heard those words cross your lips, Barnes…”

“Well, you at least oughta make a fella buy you a drink first, if not a bike...” 

And Bucky laughed and laughed until Steve punched him in the arm, but the joke was on him because he forgot it was Bucky’s metal arm hidden underneath his loose-knit sweater, so he ended up with four bruised knuckles for his troubles, but later that night in bed, Bucky took special care to kiss that pain away.

In the endless light of summer days at that northern latitude, they’d ride Steve’s bike for miles along the winding coastal roads, up into the mountains, the sun on their faces and wind in their lungs, finally, _finally_ alive. And while winters were cold and dark and too snowy to take the bike out, they’d make the best of it with long nights curled up by the fire, a book in Bucky’s hand and a sketchpad in Steve’s, exchanging soft words and slow, solemn kisses as outside, the wind howled and raged.

Each day they spend there, Steve seems younger and lighter than the last, and it fills Bucky’s heart to see him so happy. There’s a brightness to him that counteracts the effects of all his years, and there are moments when Buck will steal a glance at him from across the hull of some massive ship, and he’ll see Steve diligently at work, oblivious to anything else in the world, and he has to remind himself to _breathe_ because he cannot for the life of him understand how he got so lucky as to call a man like Steve Rogers _his._

Bucky buys them rings at the pawn shop in town. He has to admit it feels a little low, buying second-hand rings sold off by men who were down on their luck, trading in their last possession for one more drink or one last hit. But even though he and Steve have some money now, they were never ones for fancy things, and the two gold bands he finds are nearly identical but one fits over the awkward knuckle joint of Bucky’s metal hand, which he takes as a sign. So he buys the pair and takes them to the goldsmith down at the port and has the insides engraved.

_“‘Till the end of the line.”_ The words are wet and warm on Steve’s lips as Bucky slips the ring onto his finger, and that night they make love with a passion that feels so bright it all but burns them both up from inside. 

As long as they’d known each other, Steve had always been the stoic one. Bucky was the red-blooded romantic, all swagger and schmaltz, pulling a reluctant Steve into his arms for an impromptu dance barefoot on the kitchen floor back in the days when the neighbor’s radio echoed through the alley on hot Brooklyn nights when all the windows in the city were open and the summer breeze smelled like breathless sunshine. 

But here in the middle of nowhere, Bucky finds Steve gazing at him starry-eyed across their cups of coffee at the local diner, or pulling him in for a stolen kiss out by the docks at dark. They walk hand-in-hand down Main Street on rainy nights when the world is asleep, and they make time in the hammock on the front porch as the sun dips below snow-crested peaks in the distance.

It’s a small life. But it’s a good one.

And most importantly, it’s _theirs._

It’s at the end of their second golden summer that Bucky notices the change in Steve. He gets quiet and withdrawn, a crease appearing between his eyes as the edges of his lips turn ever so slightly down into a frown. He does his best to hide it from Bucky, but Bucky knows him far too well for that.

Steve always used to get melancholy in the fall, even when they were schoolboys. When Bucky asked him why, Steve answered like the artist that he was: In the fall, he’d get to use every color in his palette as the world erupted into riotous hues of red and orange and gold. But then winter would come, and he’d have to stash his colored chalks away, returning to his pencils for the bland whites and greys of winter. Bucky always suspected it’s because Steve knew he was most likely to die in the colder months. But he never questioned his reasoning.

Here and now, though, Bucky knows what it means when Steve gets sad: It means that their time together is coming to an end.

He always tries to ignore it, but it’s hard. It’s hard not to ask Steve questions, but he’s learned that questions about the Future make Steve irritable and ornery and make their last few days together miserable instead of precious, so he tries to keep his mouth shut.

But something is different about this time. Steve tries to hide it and Bucky tries not to see, but it’s a darkness so deep it’s blinding, and he finds he can’t look away.

It all comes to a head one night while they’re making time like usual. Steve’s uttering those soft cries and low whimpers that drive Bucky wild, and Bucky’s moving on top of him in solid, sensual undulations, and as far as he can tell, everything’s going to plan.

Until he blinks his eyes open, and sees that Steve’s cheeks are streaked with tears.

He stills abruptly, swearing through clenched teeth as he props himself up on his metal arm and uses his flesh fingers to wipe the tears away.

“Stevie, Stevie, sweetheart, what’s the matter? Too rough?” What he’d just been doing was nowhere _near_ the roughest Bucky’s been with him, but he’d rather die than hurt his best guy, and his heart twists painfully in his chest at the thought.

“No, no, it ain’t you, Buck, keep goin’, please…”

Bucky glares down at him incredulously. “If you think I’m gonna be able to stay hard while you’re bawlin’ your eyes out underneath me, I think we got bigger problems on our hands here, Rogers.”

Steve shakes his head frantically. “No, don’t stop. Bucky, _please,_ need you, need this, don’t stop…” Steve rocks his own body frantically under Bucky’s, and despite himself, a pulse of pleasure ricochets up Bucky’s spine.

Bucky bites his lip. Regardless of everything that’s changed between them over the years, Steve’s still stubborn as a pack mule, and Bucky knows trying to talk him out of what he wants is about as useful as telling a fish to fly. “Dammit, alright, Stevie, but you _promise_ me afterwards you’ll tell me what’s goin’ on?”

“I promise, Buck, just… please, don’t stop, God, harder, _please, harder, harder…”_

Bucky speeds up his thrusts until he’s pistoning into Steve brutally, but Steve just pleads louder for him to go _faster, harder, more, Buck, GOD, please, more! More!_ And then Bucky’s losing control and they’re fucking and swearing and shouting into the darkness and the next thing he knows Steve’s spilling hot and hard between them and then he’s emptying himself inside Steve in a series of sharp, savage thrusts as Steve wails _Thank you thank you thank you_ over and over again until Bucky feels dizzy and disoriented and collapses onto Steve’s spent form with a delirious sigh.

The silence afterwards is oppressive, and Bucky doesn’t wait long before rolling off of Steve and staring up blindly at the ceiling, waiting for his heart rate to go down. He can hear Steve breathing beside him, his intake slow and even, clearly no longer crying. 

There’s an endless pause.

“They’ll come and take you again soon.”

The news isn’t surprising. “I know.”

Another pause.

“But this time… But this time, Buck, it’s different. I’m not gonna find you for a long, long time.”

Something cold and icy settles in Bucky’s chest, and he can feel its tendrils reach out to wrap around his heart, constricting ever so slowly in the heavy dark. 

He swallows. “How long.”

Beside him, he can hear Steve shake his head. Bucky reaches out and takes his hand, giving it a squeeze.

“How long, Steve.”

“Twenty-four years.”

The words hit him like a punch to the stomach. “Oh.”

There’s nothing but the sound of their breathing.

“And… when I do find you, Buck, the thing is, it won’t be me.”

Bucky turns his head to the side, attempting to discern what he means simply by studying the expression etched into his chiseled features, but to no avail.

Bucky clears his throat. “How would you… not be you?”

“It won’t be this me, the one who knows you. It’ll be the me from the Future. I find you on a bridge in Washington D.C. while you’re in the middle of a mission. You don’t recognize me. Then… then they make _me_ your mission.”

“Christ, I don’t hurt you, do I?” Bucky feels a queasy tide of nausea rising inside him at the thought.

“No, Buck. Not too bad.” Liar.

Bucky tries to tamp down the panic rising up in his chest. “So… you help me escape?”

Steve gives a little nod. “Eventually. Eventually, yeah, we get away. And you… you get better again, and remember me. But then I have to leave you.”

Bucky wants to scream with confusion and frustration; Steve’s not making any goddamn sense, and it takes all of his willpower not to lash out. “Leave me? Why?”

Steve finally turns to meet his eye. “To go back in time and find you.”

The enormity of what Steve his saying hits him like a ton of bricks.

His brain scrambles to quantify what Steve’s just said. “But… but surely sometime in the next twenty-four years you see me.”

Steve shakes his head. “No, Buck. The records were clear. The Soldier is active during those years, whether in the Red Room or on missions, at least once every few months. I don’t… there’s no lost time there, Buck. No more escapes. I fail you.”

Bucky rolls fully onto his side to clasp Steve’s hands in his. “You don’t fail me, Stevie. You could never fail me. You’ve given me all of this. Our life. All these years. I would never have any of that without you. You gave us _us.”_

Steve blinks back at him, tears shining in his eyes once again. “It doesn’t feel like enough. I won’t stop looking for you, Buck. _I promise.”_

Bucky’s suddenly gripped with a hot surge of fear. “You ain’t gonna do no such thing. You can’t. Promise me that.”

Steve gives him a bewildered look. “But Buck, I can’t… I can’t not…”

Bucky squeezes his hands tighter, _willing_ Steve to understand what he’s saying. “Don’t you get it? If you don’t find me, Steve, it means one of two things: Either you give up, or you die tryin’. And I ain’t lettin’ you die on a mission you know doesn’t stand a chance.”

Steve’s shaking his head, pulling away his hand to wipe the tears from his eyes. “No, you don’t know that, Buck, you can’t know that--”

“Ain’t that what you’re always tellin’ me? The past is the past. You can’t change it, that ain’t how it works. So if you know you don’t find me for twenty-four years, the least you can do is _stop lookin’_ and keep yourself safe until the time comes that we can be together again. You just gotta be patient.”

Steve laughs wetly and rolls his eyes. “You know patience ain’t ever really been my thing.”

“I’m not jokin’ here, Rogers. Don’t come after me this time. I need you to promise me that.”

“Then what the hell am I supposed to do now? Lookin’ for you is the only life I know, Buck. I ain’t got nothin’ besides that.”

“Then go _find yourself_ somethin’. Go to Paris, Steve, and see the Louvre. And the pyramids in Egypt and wall in China and all the other far-off places we dreamt about as kids. Go back to Brooklyn and have a slice of cheesecake for me. Go ride the Cyclone on Coney Island. But maybe not after you eat the cheesecake. Go dancin’ and fix your two damn left feet. Cause some trouble where it’s needed. But most of all, keep yourself _safe._ And then when it’s time, come find me again. I’ll be waiting.”

They’re both crying now, and Bucky feels certain that his heart is shattering in his chest.

“But what about you?”

“I’ll be asleep, Stevie. I won’t feel a thing.” It’s a lie, but he says it anyway. Cryo isn’t really like sleep and in between the cryo there are Resets and Missions and _pain_ and _pain_ and _pain,_ but he doesn’t want to upset Steve more than he already has. He can endure this. It’s the least he can do to keep Steve safe.

Steve doesn’t despond. Bucky soldiers on. “And then you’ll wake me up, and we’ll be together. Come find me then. But not until you’ve found yourself. That’s an order.”

“Okay, Buck.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

They seal their pact with a kiss.

The next morning, Bucky takes off his ring and hides it in Steve’s wallet.

For next time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whelp, now I'm just bumming myself out... One chapter left!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested Chapter 7 soundtrack: "How Loud Your Heart Gets," Wildewoman

_May, 2023_

Sam Wilson squints at the screen in the makeshift tech tent outside the rubble of their former headquarters. Stark had fortunately had the foresight to store the hard copy of FRIDAY’s mainframe off-site, and Banner had gotten it up and running for them a few days after their final encounter with Thanos.

Bruce points to a list of files highlighted on the screen. “This is everything Cap accessed in the past week.”

“What are they?” The file names mean nothing to him; his head’s still spinning from the sudden loss of Cap and the appearance of an aged Steve Rogers.

“It’s the Winter Soldier’s records. Active dates, mission reports, everything in the system pertaining to one James Buchanan Barnes. He read it all.”

Sam furrows his brow. “And then he just... left.”

They share a meaningful glance, which is broken all too soon by the sound of Bucky shuffling by the open door of the tent. Bruce flicks the screen off before he can catch a glimpse of it, but Bucky seems entirely disinterested as he pokes his head in the door.

“I’m gonna go help Wanda with the site surveillance.” Bucky’s tone is as even as always.

Sam’s honestly a little surprised; he’d left Steve and Bucky sitting on the bench by the river only a few minutes earlier, and he’d assumed they’d have a lot more to catch up on.

“Right. Sure.”

Bucky turns to go.

“Hey, Barnes?” Bruce’s tone is light and friendly, and Bucky looks back over his shoulder at him.

“Yeah?”

“According to the system, Steve Rogers spent the last week collecting every shred of evidence we have about the whereabouts of the Winter Soldier between the years 1946 and 2014.”

Bucky raises his eyebrows. “That so?”

Bruce narrows his eyes suspiciously. “Anything you want to tell us?”

Bucky grins smugly and shakes his head. “Nope.” With that, he gives them a wave and saunters off.

But not before they catch a glimpse of gold on the ring finger of his metal hand.

_*Epilogue*_

Bucky rides his motorcycle from headquarters out to Steve’s place every Friday if he’s not on a mission. It’s not a long drive, but it’s a nice one, curving along the winding roads following the Hudson, then veering off through apple orchards and into denser woods before finally arriving at a clearing where an old white colonial house is nestled back amidst the pines.

He’ll leave his bike in the barn and hang up his helmet (typical Steve, making the goddamn _Winter Soldier_ promise to wear a helmet), then trudge up the porch steps and through the red front door, which Steve _insists_ on leaving unlocked. He’ll toe off his combat boots and stuff his feet into the cozy leather slippers that Steve leaves out for him, grab his thick, wooly cardigan off the peg in the hall, and fetch his ring from where it’s waiting for him in a dish on the dining room table. As he slips it on his finger, he’ll call out “Honey, I’m home!” It’s funny every time.

Because _home_ is what they have now. True, Bucky’s still working with the Avengers Initiative. That had been a long and difficult negotiation with Steve, but finally, Steve had come around to see Bucky’s way of thinking: He still had a lot of red in his ledger, and he wanted to do what he could to make it right while he was still able. He was (relatively) young and of (relatively) sound mind, so to pass his days in self-imposed exile seemed inexcusably selfish, considering how badly the Avengers were needed in such uncertain times.

That much, Steve understands.

But weekends were _theirs,_ and theirs alone. And for that, Bucky is grateful.

There is still sorrow, of course. Sorrow about the time that was lost, and the people that they lost with it. Sorrow for the suffering they endured, not just the two of them, but the world as a whole, torn and hurting and struggling to heal. Sorrow for absent friends. Sorrow for an uncertain future.

But hand in hand with sorrow comes joy. Joy in the form of warm slippers and cozy cardigans. Joy in the form of laughter and love and the privilege of a shared past. Joy in the form of new friends, and a future more honest than the one they lost.

Joy in the form of a barnyard cat named Buster who, against Bucky’s adamant warnings, Steve lets in the house one bitter winter’s night and decides he’s much more suited to napping in Steve’s lap than mousing in the barn, and within weeks is so cuddly and docile he’s essentially a permanent furry blanket.

Joy in the form of Saturday Suppers, the all-too-rare occasions when Sam and Bruce and anyone else from the Team that happens to be at HQ makes the trek out to Steve’s place, and Bucky and Steve whip up a batch of their famous chili using the jarred hatch peppers from their garden out back, and they all sit and laugh and just _be._ They drink to Tony and Nat and to a present hard-fought and hard-won. And at the end of the night, no one asks questions when the rest of them pack up to leave but Bucky stays, because here in the present, they don’t have to hide anymore.

Joy in the form of each other, in every shape they take. For a while Bucky thought Steve’s libido had faded with age and that was perfectly alright with him ( _honest_ it was), but he eventually discovers (after a rather embarrassing incident when he’d decided to join Steve in the shower on a whim) that Steve’s libido isn’t _gone,_ he’s just _shy._ Shy about his body and the way that he’s aged, afraid that he’s no longer enough. So Bucky makes it his business to show Stevie that he’s _always_ been enough: He was enough when he was a knock-kneed adolescent, gangly and beautiful. Enough when he was five feet seven inches of pure spitfire, raring for a fight. Enough was he was 240 pounds of pure muscle and brawn, all sinew and strength. And enough just as he is now, all calm, collected, quiet grace. It is _all_ enough. Always has been. Always will be.

They don’t think about time much, anymore. How much Steve has left. How much either of them do. While it’s true Steve’s body has slowed with age, Bucky’s missions aren’t without risks, and he knows it’s probably a 50/50 draw which one of them will kick the bucket first.

So instead of time, they measure moments, side by side as the sun rises and falls. 

Riding together, to the end of the line.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! Would love to hear your thoughts and comments on this series - it's my first foray into this fandom, and it's been a delight.
> 
> If you liked this story and are also into JohnLock fics, please check out my other ongoing series, "Unwind."
> 
> xoxo

**Author's Note:**

> I'll be updating twice weekly for this six-part series.
> 
> Shameless pandering: I live for comments.


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